She found the spoor of several unseen animals and surprised a big-eyed doe at the edge of a small meadow. The deer met her stare for a heartbeat, then bounded gracefully away into the forest and was gone. Grace watched her go, the white flag of her tail switching through the shadows, and wished fleetingly for the company of another sentient being. She was lonely and would have liked to share her new experiences with another. Stubbornly she thrust the wish aside, and with it her enjoyment of what she had seen. It was apparent that the Goddess required her to be alone for some reason; she was required to wander, homeless and peopleless, for some unknown, Goddess-willed purpose. She would do whatever the Goddess commanded. This was what had been shown to her and she would follow it. After all, if the Goddess had not meant for her to wander this valley, She would have kept Grace somehow from doing it, wouldn’t She? Grace walked on, grimly secure in the knowledge that she was doing as she ought.
In the shadows of the forest canopy the air remained cool, but in the sunlight of the meadows and open places Grace could feel the late summer air climbing to warmer temperatures. If she walked very long among the trees, she became chilled but if she stayed too long in the direct sun she began to perspire. She passed from one temperature zone to another, warm to cool, cool to warm, and seemed never to be completely comfortable. The contrast in temperature seemed to affect the clouds building up over the foothills as well; they boiled out from the high country and spilled over the edges of the valley, churning and growing at a constant rate. Grace knew now there’d be no getting away from the early autumn storm. She could not outrun it. She could only keep to the trees and be ready to duck under cover when it broke.
She walked a little more quickly now and wondered why the Goddess sent such storms to the people. They could be beneficial or destructive by turns, bringing much-needed rain or ravaging the gardens and groves with their high winds. Grace had never understood the Goddess’ intent in these matters and found it hard to accept without knowing, the way Pat had always been able to do. She wondered if she would ever understand the Goddess the way Pat seemed to.
A sudden, deafening crack of thunder broke almost over Grace’s head, startling her out of her musings. She jumped and her heart slammed against her ribs in panic. The lightning had long since struck, perhaps flashing across the sky behind her, but Grace had trouble dismissing the threat of the thunder’s jagged companion. She kept under the cover of the forest canopy, yet away from the trunks of the great trees themselves and hurried along, glancing back uneasily. From the cloud-shrouded hilltops she could catch the flash of hidden lightning and now an almost constant rumble moved down out of the mountains. A huge raindrop plopped through the trees onto her shoulder and she knew the canopy would be little defense against the heavy wind-driven rain. She would need to find better cover. She wished now that she had not been so eager to leave the animal den. Perhaps the Goddess had not wanted her to go in this direction after all, and she had not paid heed.
The idle thought, so casually formed, sparked a small flame of unease within Grace. She had never consciously gone against the will of the Goddess. It had seemed evident to her that she continue on the way she had started. Had she been wrong? Doubts erupted inside of her and rocked her emotional balance. At the same time, a cold blast of air from the mountain rolled down through the trees. The cold air pummeled Grace with icy fists and she broke into a run, looking for shelter. The rains came then, huge oversized drops that splattered and chilled on impact. Grace knew even as the winter cold robbed her body of heat that she must find shelter soon, but none showed itself to her. The icy drops of water turned to stinging needles and the ground ahead of Grace began to dance with a riot of bouncing hailstones. Her bare feet ached with the cold, her old cuts pulling open on the jagged stones, and she began to leave a trail of blood on the brittle carpet of hail. Around her the lightning flashed murderously; the thunder boomed. Sobbing now in guilt-ridden fear, Grace zigzagged blindly through the trees. She prayed hysterically for shelter, but was too panic-stricken to look for it. She careened through the forest, wet, cold and bleeding, pushed beyond sanity by the awful thought that she had disobeyed the Goddess—that perhaps she was the Sibling but had turned her back upon the knowledge and now the Goddess would destroy her. Lightning exploded a tree not twenty spans away and she yelped in panic. Throwing an arm up in an involuntary response, she caught a sharp shard of wood in the soft underside of her forearm, and the wood ripped a jagged gash as it tore past. The forest seemed alive with the sights and sounds of the Goddess’ anger; lightning sawed down through the trees or exploded in blinding fireballs; thunder and the deafening crack of breaking wood echoed all around. Grace ran and sobbed and tripped on a tree root, skidding to her knees on rock-strewn ground that tore off skin from ankle to knee. Lunging to her feet again, she ran on into an afternoon of black horror and keening pain. There seemed to be no end to it.
She ran until her chest heaved with laboring, straining breaths and her heart pounded painfully. Her mind had gone blank, as if pushed beyond its limits of emotional pain and fear, leaving her with only the irrational conviction that she must run, she must go on, even if running took her no closer to safety. Her body responded with mindless will, one foot in front of the other again and again, although the toll of exhaustion was robbing her of speed. Soaked by rain and her own tears, she plunged on without noticing how her stride faltered, how her breath burned in her chest. And when she tripped on a broken tree limb lying in her path, her feet too exhausted to lift over it, all her mind would allow was, don’t fall, don’t stop, keep going, keep going, until she crumpled to the ground and her mind was stilled.
She rolled over into consciousness later—how much later, she would never know, but sunlight was streaming in through the trees from the east. Just the turning of her body forced a cry from her, and with the exertion of that, her awareness blurred. She knew very little except that every inch of her body ached, her head pounded savagely, and she felt weak and ill.
She swallowed down nausea and lay still for a moment. It took all her energy to breathe. She felt like she should do something—get to her feet, walk somewhere—but she had no idea why. She didn’t even know where she was. Fighting the brutal pain in her head, she opened her eyes.
Trees. Forest. Where was this place? Everything before this moment was a black, bottomless hole that frightened her. Panicked, she sat up, and was rewarded by a knife blade of pain in her head and the convulsive wrenching of dry heaves. She cried out against the pain, fought to stay conscious until her body quit spasming. When the worst of it was past, she dropped slowly down to her elbows and dragged in shuddering lungfuls of air.
The pain in her head threatened to fell her. She put a hand to her forehead—slowly, for the shoulder felt bruised—and touched a raw, jagged wound encrusted with dried blood. The wound felt hot and pulsing. Drained of the strength it took to hold up that arm, she let it drop and was impaled by a breath-stealing pain between her shoulder blades. Hissing at the pain, she let go of her grip on awareness and dropped into oblivion again.
The next time she awakened it was daylight, but of the same day or another she could not guess. Her entire body throbbed. She felt hot and had to struggle to keep her consciousness. She was so weak it took all her strength to rise up on one elbow.
Her tongue was thick and dry in her mouth. She forced a painful swallow and her stomach growled in answer. She had no idea how long it had been since she’d eaten and there was no one around to tell her. She had to find food and water. She wasn’t sure if her legs could carry her or not but if she lay there much longer, she would die; if she couldn’t feed herself, her body would feed others. That was the way of the Goddess sometimes.
It took her several long moments to struggle to her feet. Her head pounded like a drum and any exertion almost blacked her out. Finally she levered herself up against the trunk of a tree and gulped in air. When the dizziness in her head finally cleared, she looked about for a way
to go.
Nothing was familiar. There was no sign of a path, nothing that denoted a human had ever passed this way before. When there was nothing to distinguish one way from another, how was she to choose?
Great Goddess, help me, she prayed silently. Which way am I to go? She glanced around her. Looking back the way her feet had lain when she awoke, she felt dark terror and a smothering fear. Please, Goddess, she prayed. Which way? She looked to her right but felt nothing there; the way was empty for her. She looked left; perhaps that way ... perhaps. She struggled to turn her body around, to face the way she had fallen—had she fallen? She couldn’t remember. That way felt ... open. Open to her, like a doorway. Like a tunnel. To what? She didn’t know. Did it matter?
Thank you, Goddess, she said silently. I am grateful. Now, if you could help me ... walk. Just walk.
The way was open to her. She stumbled some, but the forest floor was not quite as littered as the area where she’d fallen and she found once she began to walk, lifting each foot was not as enervating as it might have been. She perspired heavily, though, and felt herself burning with the exertion. Even her thin, ragged shift was overly warm. Too weak to pull it off, she trod on.
She stumbled onto a spring and almost fell into the small, clear pool it created. She sank down gratefully beside it and cupped water to her lips; they were swollen and cracked. She drank deeply, coughed and spit the water back up, then sipped it more cautiously. When her stomach threatened to convulse again, she doused one hand in the water and trailed drops of it along the heated skin of her arms and legs. Almost immediately her skin broke out in chill bumps, but the coolness damped the fire that encased her and she smoothed more water on her face and neck. Feeling a small bit of relief for the first time since she awakened, she lay down thankfully beside the pool and slept.
She wandered after that, without any awareness of time or distance or direction. After a time the forest thinned and she found a dried crust of bread at a shrine to the Goddess set upon three round stones. In her muddled mind, she understood that the altar meant people were close by and that panicked her. She stole the bread and scurried on as quickly as she could. Unfortunately even the tasteless bread aggravated her stomach and as quickly as she swallowed it, she threw it up. She prayed to the Goddess for food she could keep.
Days and nights blurred together in an unfathomable cycle of light and dark. She could not count them. She slept often and fell into fever dreams. She was running, or trying to, her feet caught in a sticky substance that held her like a fly in sap. Someone—something—was coming for her, bearing down on her. She didn’t know what it was but she was afraid of it. She would try to run, try to scream. If she was lucky, she would jolt herself awake. If not, the nameless terror closed in.
She became fearful even when awake. She flinched at forest noises, spooked at birds’ calls. She flitted anxiously from tree to tree along the way the Goddess led her.
Once she heard voices. The forest had thinned to sparse groves with meadow all around. She crouched in the shade of a tree and searched for movement. There was none, but a gust of breeze would blow a voice sound her way, and she could feel humanity. She cowered from it.
In her wildness, she even attempted to pull her own sensitivity back, her own reaching awareness, lest it touch someone and alert the other to her presence, but she withdrew too late. As she drew her awareness back, she felt another’s reaching forward, questing for her, inquiring, calling. She closed down in panic, and stumbled off through the trees. No people, her mind chanted, no people, no people. She gathered up the wisps of her consciousness like so many fluttering rags and ran on as best she could.
Somehow the forest thickened again, closing in on her, embracing her in its cool darkness. But now even that coolness could not ease the fire in her. She felt wild; panicky, irritated, sick with hunger. Her head burned and when she touched a hand to it, her fingers came away wet with seepage. She heaved dryly and could no longer keep water down. She wandered blindly, led only by some blurred, diaphanous feeling of the Goddess. Around that feeling, darkness ate at the edges. Darkness. But it was cool there, her last effort at thought reasoned. Cool in the darkness.
Stretching out on the ground, she reached for it.
CHAPTER 5
Henchmen of the Goddess came to stare at her and make signs over her, witches and wizards whose voices were low chants and dark mutterings. When she tried to look at them, they appeared half-formed—tall, thin beings stretched into grotesqueness, or short, fat ones, compressed into idiocy. They moved nebulously, without solidity, and wavered in front of her aching eyes. She felt drawn away from them, sliding backward into a whirling well of destruction and she cried out for mercy and clawed at the lip of the well above her. The witches and wizards simply watched as she fought for her life and offered no help. Once she had been sucked into the black well of nothingness, she thought perhaps her life was over and she could rest finally, but sometime later she became aware again of the wizards and the gaping hole of the well at her back. She found herself being drawn into it again and again, sucked from the shadowy gray wizards’ world into the complete blackness of the Goddess’ pit, then brought back to awareness in the gray world where it all began anew. There seemed no escape to the pattern, and eventually she gave up fighting and withdrew into a weak ball of broken-spirited resignation where the only evidences of her pain were the tremors that gripped her frail body and the silent tears that ran unchecked down her face.
The darkness gave way eventually to red—the red of pain. She felt clothed in pain. Her body stung, ached, throbbed and burned. Occasionally a cooling blue feeling would wash over part of the pain, soothing for a few moments, but then the pain ebbed back. It always came back.
Once she opened her eyes—or thought she did. There was still nothing but darkness and for a brief moment she thought she’d gone blind, but then the pervasive gray began to give way to shades and hues and she could see shapes. She was inside; she could see a single glittering star framed in an open window. This was no Goddess-place of death or spirit. Other people lived here. She heard the catch of breath in a sleeping body nearby, although she could not see anyone, and the dreaming yips of a dog outside. She tried to hold on to the waking but it slipped away from her and she drifted into darkness again.
When she awoke again, the gray blackness faded, dissolving in tattered scraps that tore away from her vision. Colors were there beyond the edges of darkness; colors, movement—people.
Grace startled at the aged male face before her, startled so badly she jerked backward on the palette and struck her back against something hard. The face instantly reflected surprise, a kind of joy, then concern and anxiety. He reached for her, catching her shoulders gently and pulling her away from the hard wall even as she tried to pull away from him.
A questioning sound came from the aged throat; his dry, seamed lips formed words Grace did not know. Badly frightened, she shook her head and backed insistently away, forcing him to release her so that she could press anxiously against the wall for its illusory support. Even as she shrank from the man, she interpreted the inflection in his voice, perceived the concern in his gray eyes. He seemed more nurturing than threatening, but those wizards—had she only dreamed them? Her mind felt heavy, blanketed as if, having slept so long, it was now too weak to function. She wished frantically for sunlight to clear her head, for familiar speech to touch her ears. There was nothing here she recognized except the aching of her body.
Another voice intruded into Grace’s battered consciousness, a woman’s this time; its lilting inflection also indicated a question. The man answered in the strange language, his eyes never leaving her, and Grace was aware of movement behind him. In the subdued light of the structure that sheltered them, Grace saw the woman come into view, moving heavily in bundled clothing—winter clothing. Grace remembered the snow, the storm, the ethereal lightning. She trembled instinctively.
The woman came closer, easing past the
man to sit at Grace’s bedside and cluck like a mother hen as she reached out a hand to brush the tangled hair from Grace’s face but Grace flinched away in alarm. The woman shook her head sadly and withdrew her hand, spoke unintelligibly to the man and moved away.
Grace watched warily from her corner as the two people busied themselves about the room. They moved purposefully, talking easily among themselves, yet she sensed that she was the object of both their conversation and their activity as they glanced toward her or motioned while speaking. The woman queried the man about something Grace could not fathom, pointing to an area out of sight to Grace, and the man disappeared around a corner of the room. While the woman continued to talk—facing the unseen man—Grace saw for the first time that they were in a cabin; that this was someone’s living space. A rough-hewn table and chairs gathered at the far wall, and winter wraps hung bulkily from wooden pegs. There were all sorts of odd things about the cabin mixed with recognizable objects: crockery bowls and primitive-looking clusters of feathers and leaves; firewood stacked in a corner beneath strange red zigzag marks on the wooden wall; worn leather boots beside the door, and a stick that had tufts of fur and feathers tied to one end. Those things could be wizard’s things, she thought.
The man reappeared and carried something to Grace’s bedside. Alarmed, she shrank back. He stopped, smiled, and indicated what he held with unfamiliar words. He motioned to her mouth, and offered her the crockery bowl. Warm, tantalizing smells drifted to her and Grace’s mouth watered. Her stomach clamored for food, but Grace shook her head. What would a wizard feed a lost girl—poison, some spell? She could not guess and was afraid to trust.
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